first oil change with synthetic mobil 1

lineman · December 6, 2011

I changed to synthetic oil about 800 miles ago and the oil is a touch low when i checked it today. The mechanic i work with told me that when changing to synthetic it would use 1 quart during the first oil change and after that it would not use any. Is this true? It didnt use any before i switched from reg to syn.

kstruckcountry · December 6, 2011

I noticed the same thing. Didn't use a quart, but used maybe one mark on the stick. Might be my fault though, maybe I overfilled a tad. According to oil life index on truck though, this oil is definitely better than regular

wilsonz71 · December 6, 2011

My truck has always run mobil 1 since new (except factory oil) At first I also noticed this, haven't had an issue since. And I check my oil almost daily at work. Guess it's normal...

dewfpo · December 6, 2011

I've never heard of this and never experienced it in any vehicle that I have switched over to synthetic since 1984. Don't know why it would happen.

DEWFPO

lineman · December 7, 2011

That is good a couple other have had the same issue. I will just keep a eye on it. I was pretty worried that when i changed to synthetic it might start using some oil cause its thinner and its a 11 year old truck but i have not seen any place it would have been leaking.

yukon_denali_05 · December 7, 2011

I have the 6.0 which uses 6 qts of oil and what I do on an oil change is use 5 qts of royal purple and 2 qt of Lucas synthetic engine oil stabilizer. My truck use to burn about 1 qt every 3500 miles and now it's at about 1 qt at 5k miles which is when I actually change my oil.

RockySierra · December 8, 2011

Your oil life monitor does not know the difference between synthetic or regular. Just a FYI.

CapitalTruck · December 28, 2011

Your oil life monitor does not know the difference between synthetic or regular. Just a FYI.

I'm glad you picked up on that too. On some cars they do, on GM's system it doesn't. I actually think this is a better system. Serious time went into gettting it right.

jaredthomas27 · December 29, 2011

The guy I bought my truck from always used conventional and when I bought the truck I changed to Mobil1 Full Syn and since then its burned about 1 mark on the dipstick after 1800 miles. Question, how can you tell how much oil has burned based on the dipstick? (1 dot = 1 quart?). Iv got a 5.3 with AFM

RockySierra · December 29, 2011

you really can't. The dipstick is just a rough estimate.

Big D's H D · January 5, 2012

Most owners mans. will tell you where on the dip-stik the "safe zone" is and then theres a mark that says add, from that mark to the top of the xxxxxxxxxF is 1 QT. It's basic autoshop 101 from add to full is 1QT.

Now about the mobil 1 thing I would also like to switch to a syn. but thought the same thing would happen, (oil consumption).

I had a 2001 vette mobil 1 from the factory and it would use a very little bit about a 1/8 qt.between changes. And yes the oil looks very thin. dave